Archive for October, 2008

He didn’t hear his Blackberry alarm at 8 am. It wasn’t supposed to be an invasive sound, like a regular alarm clock, because he was usually semi-awake by the time the morning light introduced itself to his eyelids through the only window in his otherwise dingy studio apartment. He had been looking forward to this morning’s destiny-shaping meeting with his lawyers that, if all went well, would allow him a new life and a way out of this shithole. On bad days he was only partly successful in distracting himself from the fear that his freedom would be denied. This morning he didn’t hear each of his neighbors leaving their apartments for work – the elevator clunking up and down; he didn’t hear the dogs barking in the courtyard; he didn’t hear the endless cacophony of traffic. The small bones in his ears had stopped responding as rigor mortis set in.

It was one of those dreaded ‘middle of the night’ phone calls: “Can you come to the hospital with me?”. He’d had a major heart attack a year earlier and was currently experiencing familiar symptoms. I hailed a cab outside my building, picked him up, and headed to the hospital of his choice in the undersirable La Boca area of Buenos Aires.

Now, I want you to erase any thoughts you may have about what a hospital experience in a Latin American country, in the worst section of the inner city, in the middle of the night of a full moon, might be like; it was nothing like that. After walking into an empty waiting area and explaining the problem we were immediately ushered into a private room and my friend was attended to, efficiently and thoroughly, in fluent English. Not such a long time after what turned out to be a ‘pleasant’ experience (dare I say even ‘fun’ – because my friend, an ex New York City comedian turns every experience into fun), we were escorted to the exit, cautioned to take care out there in the street, and released without even so much as a request for payment.

My therapist, believing that I might be interested in dating, asked me what I thought of Argentine men. I don’t like them any more or any less than any other kind of man I told her. But, I said, if I am not communicating at the level that I would like to communicate at with men of my own demographic, why would I want to add another barrier to that? Why would I want to share a man with his wife and his other lover? It’s true that the likelihood of (temporarily) fulfilling the tall, dark and handsome Latin lover fantasy is highter here than in the frozen north but I’ve been disappointed enough to know that fancy packaging has little to do with the gift inside. I’d rather hunker down on the couch and cuddle with my very own less than perfect soulmate and watch Antonio Banderas movies.